Protecting kids from porn - BBC porn addiction interview

The Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC Radio 5 featured internet porn addiction this week. Victoria interviewed a couple whose marriage had sadly been destroyed by the husband's porn addiction. He had sought help from an addiction recovery clinic and even though their relationship was beyond repair, both partners were able to reflect and discuss the problem with insight. They also have two young teenage sons, and their mother's ongoing fear is that their futures will be impacted by pornography. After the horrible ride that she has had, I can understand her worries.

I was invited to join the discussion, along with John Carr, an internet safety advisor from the children's charity NCH. A number of calls were taken from listeners too, providing some interesting and often controversial viewpoints.

The majority of callers were male, and several expressed the opinion that men are wired to absorb porn, and wives simply need to accept the fact and let them get on with it. Of course, I disagree.

More interesting to me was Daniel's story, the addicted husband who is now well on the road to recovery. His account of the porn addiction experience was honest and articulate, and I was a little disappointed that the ensuing debate didn't focus more on the issue of addiction. To quote from his comment on the show blog:

My own story is an illustration of that. Every serious relationship I ever had failed because of my porn addiction. For me personally, thats pretty clear evidence. I was exposed to hardcore pornographic videos at the age of 12 and I feel that corrupted my view of women, relationships and sex for a good part of my life. Thankfully I'm well on the road to recovery now. Both Sandra and I believe that all adults have the right to view pornography if they wish. Minors are a different story though. We protect children from exposure to alcohol, drugs and gambling but do they know the danger that arrives in the family home silently along a piece of wire?

Now that leads me to the issue of child protection. The advisor from the children's charity discussed internet nanny software and content filters that can be installed on the family computer. Such precautions can certainly be beneficial, both for protecting children from disturbing images and as an aid to the recovering porn addict. In both cases, however, installing internet filters should only be part of a wider approach; they are not the answer in themselves.

More importantly, concerned parents should nourish their kids with support, information and reassurance that it's ok to ask about sex and those censored websites on the computer. To quote certified sex therapist and sociologist Dr Marty Klein:

Unless kids are told that they’re bad or endangered if they stumble onto porn, seeing it won’t hurt them. If they’re really young they’ll ignore it; middle-schoolers will quickly get bored with it; older teens will get titillated or turned off, and get on with the rest of their cultural lives—celphones, tattoos, fashion, and that noise they call music.

Indeed, the unexplained presence of an internet filter on the family computer risks raising kids' natural levels of intrigue. Just what are they missing out on? What are these illicit, adult goodies and why are they so harmful? Without careful guidance to put things into context, natural curiousity becomes frustrated fascination and the protection plan backfires. Kids will only go and watch porn at their friend's house or on their mobile phones anyway, with increased intrigue.

Porn addiction develops for many reasons, and they are most often unconnected to sex. We're talking about stress, failing relationships, low self-esteem, loneliness and boredom. Kids can be protected from porn, but should be protected from confusing 'sex is a terrible thing' messages too. Letting them know that they can talk about it goes a long way to pre-empting the misguided fascination that potentially could develop into a porn problem further down the line.